


What You Did This For

by thepinupchemist



Series: Retail Hell with the Young Avengers [9]
Category: Young Avengers, Young Avengers (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Retail, Falling In Love, Fluff, Friendship, Friendship/Love, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Loss of Parent(s), Love Confessions, Multi, Pillow & Blanket Forts, Thighs Good
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-09 05:08:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20507567
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thepinupchemist/pseuds/thepinupchemist
Summary: Being loved is terrifying. Being in love? That's even worse. Teddy does his best to handle it.Good thing he has so many awesome friends.





	What You Did This For

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! Not much to warn for in this bad boy. There are a couple mentions of marijuana, and references to past drug use and alcohol abuse, but nothing explicit.

**Sountrack: San Cristobal – Mal Blum**

_ **What You Did This For** _

Shellshocked, Teddy backed out of the blanket fort, where Billy curled into a tight ball, officially asleep after dropping _the biggest bomb possible_. After shoving his feet into shoes at the door, Teddy gnawed on his lip.

He’d been thinking about this emotional dilemma for longer than he cared to admit.

He, Theodore Rufus Altman, fell in love hard and fast. Crushes had always devastated him, tearing through him like hurricanes until he was nothing but debris and ruin – and that was back before he ever told people he liked them, when he was a shy kid that couldn’t work up the courage to make friends, let alone form romantic connections.

Everything went so impossibly right with Billy – starting with a competitive night at Boards & Beans wherein Billy animated like a light show over a handful of boardgames and three cups of coffee, to now, when he lay sleeping in a fort in Teddy’s living room, the first fort Teddy had built since the crash that took his mom (he didn’t count the one he made after the hospital called, and he didn’t like thinking about that day). Everything went so impossibly right that Teddy fell ass over tea kettle in love with Billy probably about three days into their relationship.

Teddy couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment that it happened, but he did remember the exact moment that he _realized_ it.

Billy dragged him up to his bedroom, not for sexy reasons, but to show Teddy his comic book collection. He pulled out his favorites, babbling about the variant covers and which ones he’d found at Comic Con and which missing ones he still had saved to the notes app in his phone until he found them.

And Billy looked up at Teddy with a bagged and boarded issue of Wonder Woman in his hands and his brown eyes bright.

In that instant, Teddy fell in love.

“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” Billy asked.

Teddy had kissed him, because what else were you supposed to do when you realized you were in love?

And he lied about it. Teddy was actually kind of good at lying. He put that behind him, for the most part, but in the name of protecting his stupid, sappy heart, what was one more little fib?

“No reason,” he’d said. “Just wanted to kiss you, is all.”

And now Billy loved him back.

That was too good to be true.

Guilt crept up Teddy’s neck, hot and sticky, as he started America’s car and pulled it out of the apartment lot. It had a manual transmission, which wasn’t Teddy’s favorite, but America insisted made the car last longer. She was probably right, considering how ancient her red hatchback was.

The thing was – Teddy had a whole lot more than two dead moms and one dead dad behind him. He had the fallout of his mom’s death, and the people that came with it. He had Greg. The worst part of all of that crap, the stuff he’d done because he was lonely and wanted to be accepted, was that the crappiest part of his life wasn’t without witnesses, and one of those witnesses was Billy’s twin brother.

Tommy hadn’t said anything about that stuff. Not one word. The parties they went to and the posturing they’d done and the way they all pretended to hate everything, including each other. The way they drank and smoked until they forgot why they’d landed together in the first place. Maybe Tommy didn’t remember it – he did tend to take drinking a step too far – or maybe Tommy saw that Teddy got out of that scene.

Teddy got out, and Tommy had too.

But he still did that stuff, didn’t he?

Teddy didn’t deserve to be loved by someone as unique and cool and kind as Billy.

When he pulled up to the curb outside the lower exit of the mall, America kicked him out of the driver’s seat. She tossed a couple of shopping bags in the backseat, glared at him when he lifted his brows, and asked, “What’s up with you?”

Teddy replied, “Did you buy more sneakers?”

They stared at one another.

Teddy cracked first.

He always did.

“Billy said he loves me.”

America made a face at him. “And that’s a problem for you?”

“No, it’s just – nevermind. I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Did you say it back?”

“He fell asleep.”

America rolled her eyes. “You’re a mess, man,” she told him.

“I know,” Teddy said, slumping low in the passenger’s seat. He knew better than to accuse her of the same. America knew she was a mess; she was just better at hiding it than the rest of them. She ran away from everything just the same as Tommy. Her methods may have been different, but the intentions were the same.

They stopped to pick up a pizza, because apparently it was going to be that kind of night for both of them. Teddy couldn’t string the right words together, and America came home with two more pairs of sneakers that she didn’t need.

As they waited around for their order, Teddy worried about leaving Billy for too long while he was hypomanic, even if he’d crashed. He scuffed his feet against the tile floor of the pizza parlor where the grout had gone black with grime.

Teddy didn’t know a whole lot about bipolar disorder, even after scouring Google, but he knew enough to say that Billy needed someone to, if not understand, be there despite that. And he wasn’t throwing himself under the bus for the sake of acceptance anymore, either. He was doing this because he had _friends_ now, real ones, the kind that wanted him around just because he was Teddy and not for the things he could do for them.

He loved Billy.

Oh God, he loved Billy.

At times like these, he wished he had his mom. Hell, he wished he had all his parents. He may have only known his dad for a little under a year before the cancer took him, but Teddy wouldn’t give those months back for anything. He knew his dad would have something to say about all this, and even though he’d never had a chance to meet his bio mom, he figured she probably would too.

Parents were like that. Opinions everywhere.

So sometimes, a lot of times,Teddy wished he had his mom for that. She never missed an opportunity to give advice. That used to annoy him. Now he wished he had it back.

Then, other times, he remembered how much of her business she’d make this whole thing. She’d want to know where Billy went to high school and how long he’d been working at Hot Topic and when he planned on choosing a major and what would happen after they were done working shitty retail jobs at a mall that looked like the nineties threw up all over it.

With pizzas in Teddy’s arms and shopping bags in America’s, they trundled up to their third floor apartment.

Seeing Billy’s belongings piled at the door, a backpack of overnight stuff haphazardly thrown together and dumped beside his favorite pair of Doc Martens, released some of the tension tight in Teddy’s chest. While America slid the pizza onto the currently-chairless kitchen table, Teddy crouched down and peered through the entrance of the blanket fort. There, Billy slept in Teddy’s pajamas, mouth open, hand curled around a blanket the same way he’d clutched onto Teddy’s t-shirt while they were cuddling.

“Boyfriend didn’t escape his crate?” America asked, mid-bite.

“Wow, rude,” Teddy replied.

They stood around the table, rather than crawl into the fort and risk waking Billy.

“I’m texting Kate to come over,” America told him. “Three pizzas was too ambitious.”

“I overestimate how hungry I am when I’m stressed,” grumbled Teddy.

He _would_ feel a little better with more people around him.

When Kate knocked on the apartment door, America hugged her, lingering longer than was strictly necessary. Tommy followed in behind her and brought Teddy into an enthusiastic bro-hug with a clap of their hands and a tug of his arm. He reeked of weed and nail polish, and his fingernails glittered under the flickering kitchen light.

“Like ‘em?” Tommy asked. “They glow in the dark. Hey, pizza? Sick!”

As they ate and talked over each other, the old guilt and fear in Teddy’s gut eased away, and he breathed just a little bit better.

Some days he struggled to remember that these people liked Teddy for Teddy, but nobody here wanted him to be anything he wasn’t, nobody wanted him to steal for them or take things he shouldn’t. These people liked the real Teddy, not the idea of him. The two shouldn’t have been so hard to differentiate between, but oh well. Teddy wasn’t great putting himself before others.

But they did like him, and they wanted him here.

At the noise, Billy crawled out of the fort. He swayed a little on his feet, enough that Teddy dropped his half-eaten slice of meat lover’s back in the box and coiled his arm around Billy’s waist.

“Wuzz...goin’ on?” Billy mumbled, nuzzling into Teddy’s side. Teddy’s heart twitched, growing. Too big for his ribcage, now.

“Me and America got pizza, America invited Kate, Kate brought Tommy. You want any, or you wanna go back to sleep?” Teddy fished his phone out of his pocket to check the time, and added, “If you’re going back to sleep, you should probably take your night meds, just in case.”

Billy hummed in agreement, though he pressed his head into Teddy’s hand like a sleepy cat. Obliging, Teddy petted a hand over Billy’s hair.

“Pizza,” Billy slurred. He stumbled forward and squinted against the light, using Teddy to steady himself as he fumbled with the open, grease-stained cardboard boxes for the plain cheese. Billy didn’t do kosher hard-and-fast, but he did prefer to attempt it. He chewed with his mouth open and his eyes mostly closed and Teddy couldn’t help but think about how goddamn much he loved him.

“How long wuzzIout?” Billy asked.

“Only a couple hours,” Teddy told him. “I’m putting you back to bed after you eat, babe.”

“Mmkay.”

Teddy fell into this easily, the caretaking. He liked taking care of people, even if he sometimes pursued it to the detriment of caring for himself.

(But Billy didn’t take advantage of that. Not the way Greg had.)

So Teddy delivered Billy to his twin’s side and rustled up the medications. He split the lamictal in half and took the seroquel whole, and Billy washed them down with a glass of orange juice that Teddy brought him from the fridge. Tommy held onto Billy with a certainty that suggested this wasn’t the first time he’d helped him in his time of need, even if he did manage to look surly about it.

The others cleaned up their pizza mess while Teddy herded Billy back into the fort. Billy went, pliable but clumsy, and collapsed in a heap on the cushions at the furthest edge of the fort. Teddy crawled in close to him, applied a kiss to the center of his forehead, and asked, “You care if I invite everyone in here?”

“S’long as Tommy puts on cologne or something,” yawned Billy. “Tell him he smells.”

Teddy laughed and kissed Billy again. They stared at each other for a while – Billy’s brown eyes heavy-lidded, his lips turned up in a hazy smile, while Teddy imagined he blinked back like an idiot. Tongue-tied, he opened his mouth, but no sound came out.

“You’re so handsome,” Billy whispered. “Kiss me goodnight.”

Spell broken, Teddy bent to obey. Billy tasted like pizza and orange juice, and it was gross, but it was also his boyfriend.

(!!!!)

Oddly, the questionable taste of Billy’s mouth was what drove Teddy to confess: “Hey, I love you. You know, like, also. I don’t think you meant to tell me you love me, but, uh. I love you back. So that’s out there.”

Billy’s eyes opened all the way. He said, “I know I’m not dreaming this because you smell like sweat and pizza.”

“That’s – romantic,” Teddy hedged, “and I sweat when I’m nervous. Be nice to me. I fed you.”

Billy smiled, those big, brown eyes crinkling at the corners. He said, “I love you, too. I know it’s soon, but like…”

“You can just feel it,” Teddy finished.

“Yeah,” Billy agreed around a yawn. “M’gonna sleep now. Remember to tell Tommy he smells.”

“I’ll do that,” Teddy swore, and with one last kiss to Billy’s lips, he backed out of the fort and rejoined the others at the kitchen table, where they’d cleared dinner and cracked open beers, except Kate, who’d wrangled America into pouring her a mimosa in one of Teddy’s Batman glasses.

Teddy clapped Tommy on the back and announced, “Billy wanted me to tell you that you smell. You’re all allowed in the fort on the grounds that Tommy puts on cologne.”

“Wow, right for the throat,” said Tommy. “He okay?”

Teddy shrugged a shoulder and scratched a hand through his hair. “I dunno. Definitely better than before.”

“Was it that manic shit?”

Teddy nodded.

“And you got him to sleep?” Tommy ventured.

“After a while,” Teddy replied.

One of Tommy’s brows jumped – dark brows. He didn’t dye them like he dyed his hair, and the vague look of judgmental disbelief struck Teddy as so Billy-like that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t put together that they were related until Kate’s birthday party. Maybe it was the green eyes. Teddy would have said it could have been Tommy’s insistence that he was like no one else and no one else was like him, but he and Billy shared that attitude. They were also both right.

“You look kinda spooked,” Kate said. “Are you okay, Teddy?”

Teddy grabbed at the back of his neck, knowing full well how red his face was about to be. “Ah, yeah, we just said – well, Billy told me he loves me, and I told him I love him. My history with – nevermind.”

His history with people he loved didn’t have a great track record. People he loved, and people he thought he loved, disappeared, or worse.

Tommy studied him with a trained sort of nonchalance.

“What! That’s awesome!” Kate waved her arms in a wide gesture, tilting her Batman glass a little too enthusiastically to the side. America grabbed her wrist, gently, and lowered the mimosa to the kitchen table.

“Yeah, it’s pretty great,” Teddy said, and though he meant the words, his face felt wooden. “Um. Blanket fort?”

Tommy started for the elaborate structure that was their entire living room, and Teddy blocked him with a thrust of his arm.

Tommy sniffed the front of his shirt. “Is it that bad?”

America replied, “You both smell like a dispensary.”

For Billy’s sake, Teddy did manage to wrestle Tommy into masking the weed-smell into something a little less skunky-fragrant. Kate swapped her clothes, shyly, for America’s – and like Teddy’s clothes on Billy, they hung big and roomy.

Teddy felt a little ridiculous directing a bunch of a fully-grown human beings into a blanket fort, spacious as it was. On the outer edge, Billy snored softly, looking skinny and comfy in Teddy’s Hufflepuff pants. He scooted in close to him, curling around his back like a parenthesis. While Kate and America laughed and burrowed several feet away, Tommy plopped down on the other side of Billy. He let his legs sprawl out in front of him – in the dark of the fort, Teddy could see he’d painted his toes with glow-in-the-dark polish, too – but despite lounging, he held himself in a practiced sort of way.

Teddy recognized it, because he lived it. He and Tommy both had.

“You know,” Tommy said, and coughed into his hand. He studiously did not look Teddy in the eye. “All that shit back then...okay. I never said any of this, all right? We were surviving, man. You and me made it out of some shit, and we both got good stuff happening now. I’m sorry I pretended not to know you, for the record.”

“It was probably better that way,” Teddy sighed.

“Maybe. Still. My endorsement probably doesn’t mean shit to any of my fucking brothers, but, and again, I did not say this, I’m glad Billy’s got you. And that you’ve got him. He’s not always,” – Tommy exhaled, pained – “the worst.”

“I promise I won’t tell him you think so,” Teddy teased.

“You’re the realest,” Tommy shot back, and gave him a smile that was all teeth.

“Hey assholes, what are you talking about over there?” Kate called.

“Man stuff,” Tommy said.

Teddy agreed, “Trucks. Beer. Football. Uh...guns?”

“Women,” Tommy threw in.

Kate blew a raspberry at him. “Yeah, right. Teddy’s gayer than an Easter basket and you’ve got heart-eyes for HPG.”

“HPG?” Teddy questioned.

“David,” Tommy explained, but looked constipated about it, “and I don’t have heart-eyes, fuck you very much.” He flopped back on the cushions, expression distant and eyes bloodshot.

Across the way, Kate didn’t look much better. She dropped her head into America’s lap and announced, “Thighs good.”

Tommy mimed a toast. “Cheers, I’ll drink to that, bro.”

“David _has_ been working out a lot lately,” Teddy remarked, unable to bite down his grin. “He hangs out with me and America at the gym. Never skips leg day.” In his arms, Billy let out a particularly loud snort in his sleep, as though to agree.

“I’m being bullied,” complained Tommy.

“You’re blushing,” America pointed out, brows lifted high and amusement in the tilt of her jaw.

Kate leaned across the cushions to poke Tommy’s face. “He won’t tell me what he lets David do with those thighs. He won’t tell me anything.”

“A lady never kisses and tells.” Tommy held middle fingers up to both sides of the blanket fort.

“Liar. You used to tell me everything about your fuck buddies.” Kate poked him again. This time, Tommy leaned over and licked her hand. “Ugh! Fuck you.”

“Maybe David isn’t a fuck buddy,” said Tommy. “You thought about that? Poke me again, Bishop. I dare you. I will put your whole hand in my mouth and ruin your nails.”

Kate jerked her hand back. “Ha-ha,” she sung, “somebody matters to you.”

Tommy didn’t respond, which was perhaps more damning than anything he could have said aloud.

Teddy decided to bail him out. “There’s a lot of that going around,” he said, petting Billy’s hair. Billy grumbled something, but it didn’t sound like a protest.

And Kate shifted to meet America’s eyes. She agreed, “Yeah. There is.”

**Author's Note:**

> Remember to follow me on Twitter @thepinupchemist! I promise I'm not awful ALL the time.


End file.
